The Psychology of Money
Morgan Housel, 2020
Economics & business PsychologySelf-development
A short, story-driven look at why smart people make strange money decisions—and how luck, fear, patience and ego shape what we do with what we have. Short chapters, wry anecdotes and a plainspoken voice keep the mood curious and light, even when the subject turns to fear and ego.
Feels like curiosity and humor. About power.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want money explained through people and stories rather than charts. It stays at the level of principles and anecdotes, so look elsewhere for a step-by-step plan with numbers.
Why read it
It gives you a calmer way to think about saving, risk and enough, and the short chapters make the ideas easy to carry around.
A page from the book
The expensive thing is rarely the thing you're actually buying.
Be nicer and less flashy. No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are. You might think you want a fancy car or a nice watch. But what you probably want is respect and admiration. And you’re more likely to gain those things through kindness and humility than horsepower and chrome. Morgan Housel.Housel spent years writing about finance for The Motley Fool and Collaborative Fund; the book began as a 2018 blog post of the same name that spread far beyond finance readers.
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Psychology of Money for me?
- You may like it if you want money explained through people and stories rather than charts. It stays at the level of principles and anecdotes, so look elsewhere for a step-by-step plan with numbers.
- What is The Psychology of Money like?
- Short chapters, wry anecdotes and a plainspoken voice keep the mood curious and light, even when the subject turns to fear and ego. Feels like curiosity and humor. About power.
- What should I read after The Psychology of Money?
- If you liked The Psychology of Money, try Rich Dad Poor Dad (Robert T. Kiyosaki), Start with Why (Simon Sinek) and Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt).
A taste of the feed
The quiet arithmetic that decides what your work is worth.
Workers work hard enough to not be fired, and owners pay just enough so that workers won’t quit.
Rich Dad Poor Dad · Robert T. Kiyosaki
Motivation cannot be installed after hiring; it has to walk in.
Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left.
Start with Why · Simon Sinek
What a lottery ticket and a vote actually buy you.
After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it’s fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you’d spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.
Freakonomics · Steven D. Levitt
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